A+ College Ready
×
JuiceMind

An Official A+ College Ready Course

Programming Foundations

Essential Programming Concepts for Alabama Students

An engaging course built to challenge 9th-11th grade Alabama students and spark excitement for computing. Students code music in EarSketch, animate with p5.js, and build two-player games in JavaScript, while working through data science, computational thinking, and the history of computing. This course covers all the DLCS 9-12 standards and is included in the Alabama CTE IT COS.

Free for Alabama teachers
Unlock CurriculumView All A+ Courses

Course Details

Designed to integrate seamlessly into your existing computer science curriculum.

Course Information

DurationFull Year — 6 units, ~165 days
Grade Levels9-11
Programming LanguagesEarSketch, p5.js & JavaScript
PrerequisitesNone — CS Discoveries (6-8) is helpful but not required

Standards Alignment

Every unit maps to the computer science frameworks your district already reports on.

Alabama DLCS 9-12All 9-12 Digital Literacy and Computer Science standards
Alabama CTE ITIncluded in the Information Technology Course of Study
A+ College ReadyAn official A+CR course for Alabama schools
A+ College Ready

Partnership Benefits

Everything you need to deliver an exceptional computer science education experience.

Web-based IDE

No downloads, no hassles, immediately start coding with our comprehensive development environment.

INTEGRATED FEATURES

Automated Grading

Give you back hours of time with intelligent code assessment and instant feedback.

Code Comments

View and provide detailed comments and feedback on your student's code.

Plagiarism Detection

Find plagiarized responses and maintain academic integrity automatically.

Customize Your Curriculum

Edit and bring your own taste to your curriculum by changing or making new additions.

Start Course Now!

JuiceMind Quizzes

Student Engagement

Kahoot-like platform that features Multiple Choice, Select the error, drag and drop, and Fill in the Code questions.

Check out Quizzes!

Group Projects

Collaborative Learning

Students can collaborate on shared workspaces to complete various coding activities.

Check it out!

Parsons' Problems

Scaffolded Coding

Give students confidence by dragging and dropping shuffled code blocks into the correct order to assemble a working solution.

Unplugged Activities

Hands-On Learning

Step away from the screen and spark a hands-on, collaborative activity that draws every student into the conversation.

Course Breakdown

Six thematic units, roughly 165 class days, 895 items and about 124 hours of material. Each unit teaches programming through a context students already care about, and history lessons are woven through the other units as well as getting a unit of their own.

Unit 1 — DAT: Data Science / Big Data

35 days · 190 items · 20h 8m

Opens the course with digital citizenship and the ethics of computer science, then works through the full data lifecycle — collecting it, analyzing it, visualizing it, and protecting it.

Digital citizenship, CS ethics, and an AI code of ethics
Data collection, analysis, and visualization
Fixing, manipulating, and telling stories with data
Encryption, and protecting your data and your computer
Digital identity, big data, and where data is stored

Unit 2 — ART: Computing in the Arts

29 days · 167 items · 24h 20m

Students code music in EarSketch, then move to p5.js to draw, animate, and transform graphics — finishing with a final project showcase.

EarSketch: making beats, moods, and effects
Musical form, custom functions, and the JukeBox project
p5.js: basic shapes, variables, and loops
Animation and translate / rotate / scale transformations
Robot project and a p5.js final project celebration

Unit 3 — ENT: CS in Entertainment

26 days · 151 items · 23h 45m

The computer science behind film, sport, and design — from crowd animation to the yellow first-down line on a football broadcast.

Turtle graphics, fireworks, and animation basics
Stick figure animation and animating a crowd
Fashion and iterative pattern design
Roller coaster engineering
Sports tech: the yellow first-down line and goal-line technology

Unit 4 — GAME: Gaming and JavaScript

28 days · 111 items · 20h 41m

The most hands-on programming unit. Students plan games with flowcharts, build platformers in JavaScript, then critique, revise, and present their own game.

What makes a game, and planning with to-do lists and flowcharts
Intro to platformers and building a platformer game
Jumping, controlling two players, and shooting projectiles
Using animations and a two-player projectile game
Unit project, critiques and revisions, and game presentations

Unit 5 — CT: Computational Thinking / Problem Solving

33 days · 173 items · 26h 15m

The largest unit by contact time. Students learn the problem-solving methods behind everything else in the course, then carry one solution from plan through to presentation.

CS careers exploration and early programming languages
Decomposing a problem; sequencing, selection, and iteration
Recognizing patterns, abstraction, and algorithm efficiency
APIs and libraries, test cases, and simulations and models
Building, testing, revising, and presenting a solution

Unit 6 — HIS: History of Computer Science

14 days · 103 items · 9h 24m

How computing got here, from early mechanical devices to the smartphone and the recommendation algorithms shaping what students watch tonight.

Early computing devices and the rise of the microcomputer
The personal computer revolution and mobile computing
Early operating systems and the rise of the GUI
Early networking, Tim Berners-Lee, and the World Wide Web
Smartphones, streaming and broadband, and the bingeworthy algorithm
A+ College Ready

Ready to Bring Programming Foundations to Your Alabama School?

Unlock CurriculumView All A+ Courses